To Love Her
by Whas'up
Summary: It was never meant to be this way. Medical Examiners aren't supposed to play the hero. But Megan Hunt follows her own rules.
1. Chapter 1

**AUTHORs Note: Well, I've just found Dana Delany (Good god, she is perfection) and have just watched every episode of Body of Proof and have been moved to write some fanfiction. I totally think this fandom needs more everything. Vids, gifs, fiction, art, everything. Here is my humble contribution.**

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><p>This wasn't supposed to happen, not to Megan Hunt, the god damned doctor in her lab coat and heels, the lady with all the answers. She wasn't meant to play the hero, wasn't meant to throw herself between killers and police officers. She wasn't meant to be bleeding out on a dirty sidewalk downtown with a gaggle of drug dealers and prostitutes watching from afar.<p>

Bud pulled off his suit jacket, using it ineffectually to staunch the heady flow of blood streaming from the gunshot wound in Megan's chest. The cheap cotton fabric of his best suit seemed to soak instantly, the dark blue turned black with her blood.

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><p><em>"I like her," his wife declared.<em>

_"What?" Bud asked, looking up at her from his spot on the couch._

_"This Megan Hunt, I like her," his wife repeated._

_Bud laughed, "You don't even know her," he gestured for her to join him on the couch, wrapping her in an embrace when she did so._

_"I like what I know about her then," she said with a smile._

_"Yeah, and what's that?"_

_"She's beautiful," Bud opened his mouth, only to have it blocked by her hand, "I know when you're talking about a beautiful woman, Bud."_

_Bud shrugged sheepishly._

_"She's smart, she's hard working, and," she smiled sweetly up at him, "she drives you up the wall."_

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><p>The gunman, surprisingly still alive after being shot four times by Bud alone, whimpered from his, hopefully final (in Bud's opinion), resting place. He was just a kid, no more than twenty, he was crying for his mother. Somewhere Bud knew that someone would be feeling for this kid, look at the poor boy, dying in the street alone. But all Bud could see was the gun in the kid's hand, the crazy in his eyes, as he smiled and aimed at Bud's chest. He pulled the trigger and it was Megan who fell to her knees.<p>

Her big watery eyes stared up at Bud, eyebrows pulled together, she looked so fucking confused. Her pale hands, shaking with the effort, came to rest above his own, helping to hold the impromptu dressing. Could she tell him where the bullet was, if he asked? What the damage was? If she would live?

"Is okay," she mumbled her voice weak. She blinked slowly, her gaze drifting from his face to the space behind his shoulder. "You alright?" she asked quietly.

He snorted, and ignored how close it sounded to a sob, "Am I okay? Jesus Christ, Megan," he looked towards Sam, her back to him as she ran for the radio in the car.

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><p>"<em>You and Sam like working with the Hunter?"<em>

_Bud looked at the young detective, sure that he should probably know the guy's name, but really didn't._

_"What, Doctor Hunt? She gets the job done," Bud said, already turning away from the conversation and leaving the break room._

_"Had her as my ME on one case, lady is too hot to handle, but goddamn she is cold as ice." He smirked, laughing as he turned to face his buddies near the coffee machine. "I was just trying to be friendly, you know."_

_Bud stopped midstep, listening as the detective continued._

_"Helping her out of her car, keeping her warm at the crime scene, brushing her hair out of her face for her, you know," he laughed, "just being friendly. And one day we're in the elevator together and she's wearing this skirt, and it's driving me insane and I tell her what I want to do to her and I know she's into it, but then boom, she slaps me across the face. Crazy bitch. What I would give to have an hour uninterrupted with her."_

_The guy didn't even see Bud's fist until it was smashing into his nose._

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><p>Megan coughed softly, her head lolling back onto the sidewalk, her hair spread behind her like a pillow.<p>

"Hey," Bud said, his voice stern, "Megan, hey, tell me about...um Lacey, how she doing?"

"She's beautiful; I meant to..." she said, her voice soft as she closed her eyes, opening them after a beat too long, "meant to tell...her that she could go to that party." Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes and blood leaked out of the corner of her mouth.

"It's gonna be okay, you're gonna tell her," Bud told her, trying to convince himself as well as her, he leaned down close to her face, making sure she was seeing him, was hearing him. "You hear me? You keep your eyes open, okay? And next time you see Lacey, you're gonna tell her she can go to her party."

She nodded, her narrow chest puffing out weakly under his hands as her breathing erratically blew in and out. Her hands fell from the dressing, slipping back down to the concrete, landing in the growing puddle of blood beneath her with a dull splat.

He looked to the car, to Sam sitting with the door open, the radio in her hand. "Where's the bus?" he screamed.

"They're coming, ETA two minutes," Sam called back, her worried gaze asking him what he didn't want to question, would two minutes be too late?

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><p><em>"You know," Megan said from the passenger side of his car, "Megan is a great name. For a boy or a girl, really."<em>

_Bud snorted, "oh yeah? I'm sure my son Megan won't have any identity issues, or have any trouble picking up girls."_

_"Well...I've never had any trouble picking up girls," Megan said, trying, and failing, to hid her smiling eyes behind her sunglasses._

_Bud glanced at her, a smile blooming across his face._

_They couldn't stop laughing for five minutes._

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><p>Bud shook his head, grit his teeth and looked down at Megan. Her eyes were closed, her face was pale, and her blood was everywhere, all over him, all over her, and spreading across the concrete fast. "Fuck, wake up! Megan open your goddamned eyes!"<p>

She groaned softly, her eyes barely opening as she stared sightlessly upwards at the dirty grey sky.

Bud bowed his head, tears falling, "God, Megan, why'd you do this?"

Why did you step between me and the gun?

Why is it you bleeding to death?

I don't know how to save you.

But _you_ would have known how to save _me_.

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><p><strong>Disclaimer: Do you think if this was mine I would be on here with the likes of all you? I would totally be BFFing with Dana for sure.<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: "Hey author, why is there no technical medical terms or anything in your fic?"

"Ah, good question, because I don't know anything about anything related to anything medical, and therefore I would look like a big dummy if I attempted to put details in here. You're just going to have to be happy with 'she got shot in the chest' and 'she lost a lot of blood' and that's that."

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><p><strong>"Mrs. Hunt? It's about your daughter..."<strong>

_"Mrs. Hunt? It's about your husband..."_

Joan slammed on her breaks as she hazardly parked in the hospital lot. Her vision was blurry with unshed tears as she tore her keys out of the ignition with shaking hands. She grabbed her purse violently and rushed out of the driver's seat, not even bothering to lock the expensive car in her haste.

**"She was working a case..."**

_"We found him in the bathroom..."_

Joan stormed into the hospital, making her way towards the reception desk with such abandon that one young man actually leapt out of her way. She was stopped midway by a hand on the crook of her elbow, holding her back gently. "Mrs. Hunt," the same voice from the phone call. Joan turned around to face a tall black woman, her badge proudly displayed on her hip. "I'm Detective Baker, I'll take you to the waiting room. They have her in surgery now."

Joan nodded as she tried to build up the walls she'd hidden behind her whole professional life.

**"The suspect pulled a gun..."**

_"There was nothing we could do..."_

Detective Baker kept a firm grip on Joan's elbow as she led the way to the OR waiting rooms, Joan couldn't walk in silence. "How bad?" she asked, blue eyes wide as she looked at the blood peppering the detectives white button-down shirt.

The other woman looked at her, eyes grim and expression sad, "Bad, Mrs. Hunt. She lost a lot of blood at the scene."

Joan nodded; chin out as she pushed her lips together with her eyes closed.

**"Doctor Hunt was hit at close range..."**

_"He's dead, Mrs. Hunt..."_

They emerged into a dingy little room filled with an assortment of mismatched and sadly wilted chairs. Joan recognized another of Megan's co-workers, another detective, sitting in one of the chairs, his head held in his hands. There was blood all over him.

"oh, god," Joan whispered, stepping backwards until the back of her knees hit a chair and she fell hard into it.

The wall Joan had built around her heart, the wall she'd been hiding behind finally shattered.

**"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Hunt..."**

_"I'm sorry, Mrs. Hunt."_

Joan had just gotten her daughter back after years of distance. Her beautiful daughter, who had blamed Joan for her father's suicide for so long. Her brilliant daughter, who had resented Joan for decades because of her controlling nature. Her awkward daughter, who Joan loved more than anything in the world. The baby girl that had come home to find her home filled with cops, cops who told her that Daddy was dead and Mommy wasn't home.

Joan had just gotten her back, and now she was being ripped from her arms once more.

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><p><span>Disclaimer: Would I sell my soul to own 'Body of Proof'? Well, no, but I would definitely sell<span> _your_ soul.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's note: wooooohoooooo! Yeah, chapter three in the hisow! Let's all be sad for poor little lacey, yyeeaaaahhhhh!**

_Lacey wasn't a stranger to hospitals._

_When she was very little her mother used to bring her to work with her sometimes. Often Lacey would be deposited in the break room with a trusted medical student or left at the nurses' station to be cooed over, but Lacey remembers that sometimes her mother would perch Lacey on her hip. Lacey remembers the swell of pride she used to feel as she was held to her mother's side, her powerful, smart mother. She remembers the swell of love that would fill her heart when her mother would look down at her, smile her beautiful smile, and introduce her to new colleagues. "This is my daughter, Lacey," her mother would say, her eyes shining._

_Over the years she didn't go to the hospital as much, after she started school she didn't go at all, but the memory was still there. The knowledge that her mother was someone important, that everyone in that clean place that smelled a little funny listened to her mother and did what she said, that her mother saved lives, was still there. The pride was still there._

_But then Dad wasn't happy anymore. And he told Lacey she shouldn't be happy anymore either, because Mommy cared more about work then her own family. She was never home. She never took Lacey anywhere. Daddy said Mommy didn't love her as much as he did. And after a while...Lacey believed him._

_And those memories of sitting on her mother's hip, those memories of holding the lapels of white lab coats in her tiny hands, of her mother's red hair flashing under harsh florescent lights, those weren't happy memories anymore. They were proof that her mother loved her job more than her daughter. Because parents who love their daughters take them to the park, her father said, they play with them; they pick them up from school and eat dinner with them. It was only much later that Lacey remembered Dad didn't do any of that either._

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><p>Lacey wasn't a stranger to hospitals.<p>

She didn't have an especially hard time finding the Intensive Care Unit, she did have a hard time actually entering the place, as if entering made it all real, made her mother being shot a reality. It could be a mistake, grandma could have been confused, Lacey tried, but she knew that she was too old to play pretend for long. Lacey opened the swinging doors to the ICU, glancing around briefly at all the different beds and people and nurses until she saw the back of her grandmother's head. Lacey, hugging herself the whole way, inched forwards, "Grandma?" Lacey called.

Joan Hunt turned her head, swiping at her eyes as she did so, to smile sadly at Lacey. Lacey could still see the tear tracks on her cheeks. "Where's your father?"

Lacey didn't answer as she stopped beside the bedside. The truth of it was that he'd had a court date, had only enough time to drop Lacey off with a kiss and the platitude that everything would be okay. It was cold of him, Lacey thought; to not want to see the woman he once loved. But after a moment looking at her mother she started to think that maybe she shouldn't have come either. It would have been easier to never see her mother this way. To never imagine that she could look so small and so fragile.

Her mother was as pale as the bed sheets beneath her, even her lips, normally painted, were a dull shade of skin tone. There were so many wires and tubes attached to her that Lacey couldn't even count them, they were all of different size and color, and all of them were hooked up to machines. There was a tube down her throat.

From the waist down her mother was covered with a blanket, but the top half of her mother had been left unclothed. Gauze covered most of her chest, bloody gauze stained yellow with iodine, but a part of her mother's breast was easily visible and Lacey had the almost uncontrollable urge to cover her. To protect her mother's dignity when she couldn't herself, but in the end she was too afraid to move anything, afraid that she'd hurt mother while trying to help her.

Lacey looked down at her grandmother's seated form, "Can I-" she started as she reached out her hand towards her mother's hair.

A high pitched whine interrupted her and her hand skittered back.

Joan sighed and reached out for Lacey's hand, grasping it softly as she strongly guided it down until it rested atop the crown of her mom's head. She ran her fingers through the hair gently, it was always so soft. Lacey's face scrunched up as she started to cry, her mother's hair, the hair she used to be fascinated with as a little girl, it had clumps of dried blood in it.

Joan stood suddenly, drawing Lacey into a tight embrace. "It's okay Lace," she whispered, rocking gently.

Grandmother and granddaughter both cried as quietly as they could.

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><p><em>Lacey wasn't a stranger to hospitals.<em>

_Her father had taken Lacey to see her mother after the car accident once. He hadn't wanted to do even that, Lacey learned far after, her mother had begged him though. Begged him. Lacey didn't know that at the time, she was only seven, eight maybe? Her father gave her the impression that her mother didn't want to see her, which wasn't hard to make Lacey believe._

_Her mother's face had been swollen and bruised; a chunk of her hair had been shaved off to stitch a huge gash down the back of her head. She'd been covered in gauze and casts and splints. She'd beckoned Lacey to her side and Lacey remembers hesitating, frightened by this strange creature that had taken the place of her strong and beautiful and aloof mother._

_"Lacey," her mom said, her voice sounding as it always had, but then she repeated when Lacey wouldn't come "Lacey" she'd whispered, and she'd sounded so broken, so hollow and hurt, that Lacey had raced to her side. The little girl wanting to comfort her mother._

_"Careful!" Todd said, crying out not a second too soon, because Lacey was fully prepared to jump onto the bed with her mother._

_Lacey had turned to look at him, surprised at the concern etched into his features as he'd stepped fully into the room. He came to his ex-wife's side and very gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her into an embrace that she crumbled against. It had been the only time she'd seen her mother cry._

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><p><strong>DISCLAIMER: Ain't mine bee, don't sue me, 'cause i find you...Mmmmm hmmmm.<strong>


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